As Things End
by TiggerFace
Summary: Things had stopped working a while ago, it just took her some time to realize that. Oneshot. Joniss.


I own nothing. Not a happy fic.

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They had been drifting apart. She hadn't noticed for a while, but looking back it started a long time before her sudden realization a week ago when her wife had come home in the middle of the night and slept on the couch. For the third time. She had claimed it was because she hadn't wanted to cause a disturbance but they both knew that wasn't the real reason.

Lying there in the dark, staring at the ceiling and unable to sleep, again, she reflected on it. It had actually started months ago. Panem had been making progress, more than anyone had expected. President Paylor had taken to power with a benevolence people forgot existed and had pushed everything towards fixing the country. The traveling restrictions had been lifted, there were more trains that allowed for people to move freely, the wealth had been redistributed and spread to all the districts. People still lived in squalor, there was still specialized production in each district, and families and Victors still grieved over the Hunger Games, but things were better. For their lifetime at least. Nobody expected it to last, but she and her wife knew that for their lifetimes Panem would be better.

It was fitting of course, that the country and life in general was getting better while her personal life was once again falling apart. Equality remained in the universe, at her expense of course. Rolling over to study her wife's sleeping form, curled up at the edge of the bed instead of around her she let the cynical thoughts run free. They had been so hopeful at the start of their relationship. Coming from a lack of love and too much unwanted love they had thought it would work. They balanced each other out, each at opposite ends of the spectrum, and had become infatuated with that – not realizing that neither of them really knew how to love anymore.

It had worked for a year. Then a couple months ago it hadn't. Of course it hadn't in small ways – which was why they didn't noticed. It hadn't worked when they didn't talk about living together, just did, existing around each other for a while before slowly sliding together and fitting. At the time it had felt like puzzle pieces finally clicking but now she realized it would have been more accurate to view it as puzzle pieces finally breaking down enough to allow themselves to interlock. They hadn't fit when they were whole but didn't realize how much they were changing to make it work. Too much apparently.

It hadn't worked when they didn't talk about where to live, instead just left one uprooted while the other stayed in a place that was safe but too full of reminders of a life that no longer existed. They thought it would work, but even though the uprooted one wasn't leaving anyone she was leaving a place, her home, behind. The place that had made her, kept her, molded her. The place that she loved. The place they lived now caused the other too much pain, with reminders of a mother who was never coming back and of a sister who couldn't. With the heavy weight of two boys, one who had fled and one who had stayed, both who had moved on without her. They had swapped the roles they should have had, the one who should have stayed leaving and the one should have left remaining where she was.

It hadn't worked when they didn't acknowledge the devastation Haymitch's death caused the other. Neither inclined to talk about their feelings they had mourned separately, both grieving the loss of a mentor who had influenced them equally. They had moved past it without using the other as a crutch as they realized how easy it was to retreat back into themselves and adopt a mode of isolated survival that had served them well in the games.

It hadn't worked when they had discussed children, going round and round in circles each time. They had always been at odds, changing their minds in tandem with the other, but always to the opposite decision. One would argue for kids with the other against, and the next time around their roles would be reversed. They settled on the agreement that one of them would try for six months then the other would and if they weren't pregnant within a year that would be that. They hadn't counted on three miscarriages for one and a diagnoses of infertility for the other, the combination of which had left the room at the top of the stairs empty forever.

It hadn't worked when they had slowly stopped communicating. They loved each other, they both knew that, but they were less sure they liked or even knew each other. They met in a situation that changed everyone who was forced to participate and their following courtship never included much of who they were without the hopes and lives of a nation riding on their shoulders. They had never gotten to know who the other actually was. The honeymoon phase had trapped them both, leading them to count on love to pull them through the downs and amplify the highs. It had worked for a year. Then it hadn't and now one was left lying on the bed, staring at her wife across a rift that was more than the foot and a half of space between them.

She knew her wife knew, had just been waiting for her to realize it too. In conjunction with their relationship they hadn't talked about it, just let it happen until it had overcome the threads holding them together. Her wife's late night jaunts and new trait of sleeping on the couch were hints, hints that she needed to start noticing it. There was nothing else happening, no drinking, no affairs, nothing but a silent lack of presence that was meant to tell her she needed too look at where they stood.

Of course what _it_ actually was that had destroyed them she didn't know and she knew her wife didn't either. She would have liked to know, but finding out would mean acknowledging to each other out loud that they were over and she knew that neither of them could handle that. They were all the other had left and in keeping true to their lives they were going to loose that too. She sighed and rolled back onto her opposite side, slowly sliding her legs off the bed and standing. Moving quietly to the other side of the bed she crouched in front of the sleeping woman and took the hand dangling off the side of the bed.

"I don't know what happened or where we went wrong. I wish I did but I'm also glad I don't because we both know how much I love denial. Just know that I love you and I'm sorry." She dropped a kiss on the long fingers and stood slowly, taking one more second to look at her before turning and moving towards the door. As she exited the room she heard a soft whisper behind her.

"Me too."


End file.
